Found+READ: Stories by Om Malik

Derek Jeter

Om Malik — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:53:15 GMT

If you read New York tabloids like I do, that is starting on the back page, then you are exposed to the incessant chatter about Alex Rodriguez, clearly the best baseball player in game’s recent history and how he stacks up against Derek Jeter, the face of The New York Yankees.

The $250 million versus $135 million contracts, the winning attitudes, their performances in clutch situations are part of the New York vernacular, giving obviously biased ESPN commentators a chance to chime in and add fuel to the fire. I love the fact that Yankees, my home team has them manning the infield. I love the silky smooth home runs that come off A-Rod’s bat.

Derek Jeter, however, is someone I respect. He might not be the most gifted hitter, nor is he the best short stop in the game’s history. What he is is an everyday player, who has taken the talent he was born with, worked hard, and transcended to a superstar status.

DJ, as we Yankee-fans know him, is an ideal role model for a start-up entrepreneur. At least, Jeter inspires my business philosophy—mostly because of what he does both on and off the field.

1. Consistency wins the day: Jeter’s stats say it all. He has a lifetime batting average of 0.317, and he has stayed above 300 for all but three of his seasons. (I’m sure I don’t need to explain to my readers that this is like a company founder, or a VC, hitting the proverbial IPO home run on every third company.)

More importantly, Baseball season is 162 games long; you have to show up everyday and work hard, and do your best. Even though we would like to believe that a start-up is a sprint, the reality is it a marathon.

2. Opportunity knocks, better open the door: In 1996, when Yankees Manager Joe Torre introduced Derek Jeter as his new Short Stop, Jeter stepped up to the mike, and chose his words carefully: “I’m going to get an opportunity to become the shortstop.”

What Jeter was saying, despite all his evident gifts, is that we all have to earn the right to be successful —whether it is playing baseball, or building a company. Your peers, the press, and your venture backers might give you an opportunity, but you can never forget to respect this for what it is —an opportunity, not an entitlement. And you must work hard every day to continue to earn it.

3. Lead by example: Derek Jeter does not walk through an empty stadium—he jogs.

Just because no one is watching doesn’t mean you can relax. Any time is preparation for game time.

You have to assume that one day that stadium will be full, and you will have to jog across it in front of thousands of fans. Same holds true for founders. Today you might be working alone. Tomorrow you will have others working with you, and they will take their cue from your stride, your determination —and your consistency.

4. Focus on the bottom line: “Bottom line” is Jeter’s favorite phrase. Being bottom-line oriented keeps him focused on the task at hand, and the ultimate goal —winning. Being bottom line oriented keeps things simply, and eliminates distractions, allowing him to maximize his talent, and his effort, to achieve the win. In my case, it’s not just profits, but also ensuring that we keep the quality of consistent, and high-impact. Having my own “bottom line” has kept me focused while running this little publishing company of ours. And I have been known to jog across the office, especially when it’s empty.

Introducing Found|READ

Om Malik — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:56:33 GMT

Many of us in the reporting business, convince ourselves that we can do a better job than folks we typically write about, a malady that is often experienced during the boom years, at least in Silicon Valley. Like others, I had my visions of grandeur. Talk about being delusional, for the differential between theory and practice is that between Roger Clemens and a 12-year-old pitching in the little league games.

Last nine months have been a lesson in humility, and a harsh realization that starting a company is for those dumb enough to climb a rock face standing perpendicular to terra firma. Confusion, constant second guessing, manic multitasking and perma-smile are new emotions. Caffeine has become my best friend. Sleep and I have broken up.

While growing our little publishing company has been a thrill-a-minute, it has also been an educational process, one that Harvard Business School can't teach you. I have been scribbling some of my lessons, hoping to someday turn it into a book. How analog for a digital guy - quipped a friend who also was responsible for the title of my first book, Broadbandits. Why don't you start a blog about it, after all you are good at blogging - he said.

Mulling over this for a few days, it dawned upon me, that the lessons I am learning, thousands have learnt before, and might actually have a wider (and better) perspective on trials and tribulations of being a founder of a business. Not just a tech start-up, just any business. Why isn't there a resource that captures this tribal wisdom? What if we could build one - one that can be shared by one-and-all?

While there are some excellent resources such as Reddit-powered YCombinator start-up site, Startupping, Venture Hacks ... what I envisioned was a digital salon - where the conversations were started, experiences shared, questions asked and answered - with us writers playing the role of a salon keeper, a.k.a. conversation lubricant.

I harassed quite a few entrepreneurs and asked them if they would like a resource like this, and if they would become active participants in this project. Most, if not all were encouraging, and signed-up for this new effort, that is called, FoundREAD. (A little cheesy play on Foundry, but hey these are days of domain squatters.)

FoundREAD is a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Just like a GPS system helps us drive through a maze of freeways, the founders and entrepreneurs help their peers navigate the twisted, confusing roads of company building.

So here it is folks, the newest member of GigaOM family. Hope you can visit, and share your stories with us. And sign-up for RSS feed!

Knowing When to 'Whack It'!

Om Malik — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:10:24 GMT

The Sopranos are the sole reason I have hung on to my Comcast cable television account. I’ve been waiting for the final curtain to fall on the epic series before I pull the plug on television – for good. Now, three episodes into the final season, I am beginning to regret that I didn’t walk away sooner! The Sopranos in its last season is boring, long in the tooth, and well, has lost some of its edge. Paisans with prostrate problems, mobsters with mental disorders and Prozac-dependency, and pneumatic Russian blondes are now shticks for a show that was once must-see-TV. Watching a scene in the latest episode, when Tony started thinking of his youth when Paulie was cool I realized how trite and Hollywood-esque the show had become. It prompted me to ask myself: why is it so hard to recognize that an idea is no longer good? And when we do, why is it so hard to kill it? Why, against our better judgment, do we persist in spending precious creative and material resources on products that clearly are not working? Despite all the hype, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “Nielsen Media Research”:http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i908ab23ddf11fcfd5d6deeb5a7108cf6 reports that 7.7 million viewers tuned-in April 8 for the premier episode of The Sopranos final installment – a 19% drop in viewers from the March 2006 season debut. Call me crazy, but a double digit drop in audience size is often enough to get a less-beloved (or should I say, less capitalized?) television series whacked. The Sopranos practically minted money for HBO in its first five years. But now I wonder, did the network press its luck in buying the last season? Although The Sopranos is still the top-rated cable TV show, Nielsen reports its viewership has slipped even further in each of the "two weeks since":http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.43afce2fac27e890311ba0a347a062a0/?show=%2FFilters%2FPublic%2Ftop_tv_ratings%2Fcable_tv&vgnextoid=9e4df9669fa14010VgnVCM100000880a260aRCRD. I’m guilty of Plug-Puller’s Procrastination, too. Consider my experience with GigaGamez. For someone who knows a thing or two about online publishing, the tell tale signs that GigaGamez wasn’t going to cut it were there just weeks after the site launched in December 2006. GigaGamez traffic growth was about as well-paced as Tony Soprano on the treadmill. After an early spike, it never exceeded 1000 page views a day, flattening out, and performing far worse than the double digit growth rate of our very successful franchise, "NewTeeVee":http://newteevee.com/, and paled in comparison to the WebWorkerDaily, which is about six months old, and currently on track to overtake GigaOM by end of the year. In case of GigaGamez, it never garnered attention from other bloggers, and never formed a community. Both NewTeeVee and WebWorkerDaily have a passionate community of users. Yet, with the unbridled optimism that sustains us founders, I persisted in throwing good money after bad, betting long that the GigaGamez posts would eventually energize the site. Two months and thousands of dollars later, it became painfully obvious that it wasn’t going to work. (I paid "my respects":http://gigaom.com/2007/04/13/the-new-the-old-an-update/ on GigaOM earlier this month.) But there was a lesson learned: never be the me-too player in your business category. It was not easy to admit that Joystiq and Kotaku dominate the gaming blogs and scores of other lesser known blogs. Logic and facts dictated that I should have made this decision earlier – but I didn’t. Just like HBO. Sometimes we fail to recognize that occasionally an idea is poorly-timed, just bad, or–as in the case of The Sopranos—it has just exhausted its potential. In either case the cold hard truth is that it is time to whack it!

Beware of Big Brother

Om Malik — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:47:30 GMT

Start-ups backed by industry peers almost never work out. The latest example being "U3":http://www.u3.com/, a start-up that was pushing the concept of running applications off a USB flash drive. U3 was co-promoted by M-Sytems and Sandisk. (Read U3 to U-Zero The Sandisk decision made me think about the relationship between start-ups and the big brother. I have seen it time and again, the strategic investments or partnerships work against the start-ups. While it is alluring to team up a big brother, it also limits your options. Remember how @Home, backed by large cable companies unraveled. More recently large media companies are promoting a big YouTube killer, but it is hard to imagine News Corp and NBC having similar end goals. Taking money from a large industry peer, such as Sandisk, can artificially shorten a staretup's runway. If "Big Brother" decides the startup's R&D conflicts with its own best interests, it's game over. (Of course I'm assuming the most founders start their companies with more than just a quick exit in mind. That was the 1990's!) Thoughts?

RfP: Crazy Tales of Fundraising Feats

Om Malik, Carleen Hawn — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:04:14 GMT

In response to some of the valuable feedback you’ve given us since our “3-month report card”:http://www.foundread.com/view/give-found-read-a, we’d like to begin producing a week-long serial on Found|READ. Each Friday, we’ll promote a topic and ask for RfPs—a.ka. submissions—on a particular topic. Readers can submit their tales on the selected topic (e.g. hiring, firing, strategy, marketing, etc.) throughout the weekend. On Monday, and again each day throughout the following week, Found|READ will post one additional contribution to the series, and publish the entire package until the following Monday—when a new serial begins. Submissions can be links to relevant stories on the week’s topic found elsewhere, or original pieces authored by Found|READers based on their personal experiences.

Since this format is new, we figured it would be a good idea to launch it with a fun topic.

Our inaugural topic is crazy funding tales.

We want to hear about the strangest, riskiest, funniest, most off-the-wall tales you can find about how you and others funded their businesses. Go ahead and call your grandmother, hit-up the hotdog stand man, or rescue that B-school case study book from the trashbin. The story that generates the most page views wins a $100 “Amazon Gift Certificate”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00067L6TQ/ref=sv_gw_0/102-9752964-2810507 from Om. So dig deep, and send us your best…or worst, or weirdest…..

(And if you haven’t submitted a comment/ criticism/ suggestion, we’d still be grateful to hear from you “here”://www.foundread.com/view/give-found-read-a!)